Fix Fonts Issue in Android Studio with El Capitan on OS X

07 Oct 2015

The problem

If you have recently upgraded to El Capitan and now your fonts in Android Studio are non anti aliased (they look thin and broken) you've come to the right place for a solution.

The source of the problem is in the different font rendering used in different SDK versions. The Java 6 (JDK 1.6) which is used by Android Studio by default has the subpixel antialiasing rendetin while the JDK 1.7 and JDK 1.8 do not.

I have upgraded from Mavericks to El Capitan and suddenly my JDK 1.6 was gone and not surprisingly Android Studio's font rendering was horrible.

To confirm you don't have JAVA 6, go to /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines and run ls

cd /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines && ls -l

you will most likely see jdk1.7.0_60.jdk jdk1.8.0_31.jdk as an output. (that's what I saw)

The fix

You should download JAVA 6 from this Apple's support article. It's about 70Mb install file. Make sure to close any Java apps and run the installer. You should have the 1.6.0.jdk folder inside your JavaVirtualMachines folder I was talking about above.

Once this is set, you can launch Android Studio and enjoy the anti aliased fonts again.